


We Face The World

by Inrainbowz



Series: Family Life & Everyday Love [2]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Domestic, Family Feels, Heteronomartivity at work, Homophobia, M/M, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 09:30:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6900478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inrainbowz/pseuds/Inrainbowz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times someone defended Alec's family, and one time he did it himself.</p><p>Because being a same-sex couple with a child isn't any easier in the Mundane World than it is in the Shadoworld.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Face The World

**Author's Note:**

> I started this forever ago. I wonder if people really read those notes, but I like to comment on what I do, so well, it doesn't matter.
> 
> WARNING: this contains flagrant display of homophobia, and Maryse and Robert Lightwood being actually decent at parenting. Don't be too shocked (in the book Maryse is shown more accepting, but the thing that really do it for them is the granchildren. I guess there's that then.)
> 
> Thanks to NightChanger for the corrections, enjoy!

1\. Isabelle

 

It was a bright Sunday afternoon, warm and sunny, and the park was crowded with families enjoying the weather. Magnus and Isabelle were sitting in the shade of a big oak tree, Max giggling happily on his aunt’s knees, but she wasn’t as cheerful as the child.

“Why isn’t Alec here?” she asked Magnus in a conversational tone, attention focused on her baby nephew. She still felt the man tense beside her, even if his tone was even when he answered.

“He was pretty tired, this has been a rough week, between your shadowhunting business and this little devil refusing to sleep.”

He tickled Max’s side lightly, a fond smile betraying his seemingly annoyed voice, but Isabelle wasn’t smiling.

“Magnus…”

“Am I that transparent?”

“No, but my brother is, and I know him. Like he would ever be too tired to spend time with you and Max.”

She was right, of course. Magnus had never had to complain about Alec not giving enough of his time to his family: that’s all he ever did. The warlock was frankly impressed by the amount of energy and patience contained in that young body, because Alec never seemed to run out of it. Even if he was on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, he would be up and alert as soon as Max or Magnus hinted that they needed him.

“Come on Magnus, tell me what’s going on.”

He was about to answer when two old ladies stopped in front of them on the path. They looked fondly at Max who was playing with Isabelle’s hair.

“You have a beautiful son,” one of them said to the young girl. Magnus gritted his teeth, but Isabelle wasn’t one to stay quiet.

“Thank you, but he’s only my nephew. He’s his father – she pointed Magnus – and my brother couldn’t make it.”

They watched the two women process her words and slowly lose their smile.

“Oh. Well, have a good day anyway.”

“You too.”

When they were out of view, Isabelle turned to Magnus to make a joke or a bitching comment, but she was stopped by the gloomy expression on his face.

“Magnus?”

He sighed deeply, frustrated.

“That explains it. That’s why he didn’t come."

“Alec?”

“Oh, he didn’t say it, of course, but I know. You see, we knew how hard it would be to be accepted in the Downworld. We were fully prepared to face the bottomless bigotry of Shadowhunter prejudices, and it hurt, yes, but we knew. A same-sex Shadowhunter-Downworlder couple raising a warlock child, that couldn’t do. But… I don’t know why I didn’t think about it earlier, but something else that would certainly not do was a same-sex interracial couple raising a child, in this world.”

He made a gesture englobing the whole park, the couples walking with their children in tow, the toddlers playing in the sandbox, the grandparents watching two generations of offspring. 

“Did something happen?” she asked gently, a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“It never stops. The dirty looks on the street, the whispered comments in the store, this kind of encounter, the “where is the mother of this adorable boy?””

His growing anger was affecting Max who started to thrash in Isabelle’s grasp. Magnus picked him up, both to soothe the child and himself. He didn’t want to get angry – he had done enough of that already.

“I can’t explain it to Alec, he can’t understand it. He was aware of the prejudices of your people, and took them as they were, even if they didn’t make sense. I guess he thought there was an explanation, a reason. And mundanes have reasons too, I suppose. Or they think they do. But it doesn’t make any sense, and he can’t understand.”

It had been so terrible, to sit Alec down and try to explain to him what exactly was the problem of people seeing them together with Max, outside. That they thought it was wrong, abnormal, immoral, disgusting. Nothing he hadn’t heard from his own people, but that night Alec had to learn that there was no respite anywhere, nowhere to go where they wouldn’t be bothered. 

Nowhere but in the sanctity of their home.

And now he was even scared to go out. 

Max was fumbling with the necklaces around his father’s neck, oblivious to his torments. 

“I’m so sorry Magnus. But you can’t let him lock himself up like that. The world is as it is and life is long still. He will have to face this eventually.”

“But it’s yet another area where he has to fight. For everything, he has to. For love, for family, for his own life, every step of the way, every little thing has to be a struggle, us against the world.”

“He can take it.”

“He shouldn’t have to. It’s not fair.”

He winced at his own foolishness. He sounded like a child, what would it achieve? The world was as it was, there was no changing it, not anytime soon. 

“I just wish we could be happy and free. Is that too much to ask?”

Isabelle moved her hand to rest on the side of his neck. He closed his eyes for a moment, before the small hands of Max on each side of his face made him open them again. He smiled at his son.

“Daddy wants to shield you from any harm,” he whispered to the child. “He just wants you to grow up safe and happy. You know that right?”

Max didn’t answer, of course, but he tapped his hands against Magnus’s cheeks, making him smile with more warmth. 

“I think he stopped caring about what people think of him, but he can’t bear the way they look at me, and Max. I think he fears getting angry. He gets paranoid, like everyone around us is constantly judging us, condemning us.”

“Is that why he asked me to accompany you today?”

“He would say that at least no one will bother us like this.”

She made a little hurt noise and he looked apologetic.

“I’m sorry. I’m bringing down the mood. I’m too depressing, right Max?”

The boy only laughed.

“I guess it must be hard, for both of you.”

“Yeah, but as terrible as it sounds, I got used to it. A long time ago. I didn’t just stop caring, it’s more than that. I started doing it on purpose. Let them be scandalized, let them be angry. I’m used to attracting attention, good or bad.”

“You love it,” she said with a short laugh.

“That I do. And this one does too, yeah? So adorable and cute, charming everyone who passes you by,” he accused Max with a fake scowl before breaking into a smile and bumping his nose against his son’s, making him giggle. 

“But Alec doesn’t,” he added quietly. “What he likes is to be left in peace, to go unnoticed. And he can’t.”

They stayed far less time than they normally would have, but they weren’t in the mood. Even Max wasn’t as thrilled as he usually was to be out at the park. Without both his parents he couldn’t quite enjoy it.

“It’ll be fine,” Isabelle told Magnus when they reached the loft, after refusing to go up for a drink. “Go and comfort him. It’ll be fine.”

He nodded, unconvinced, and she frowned. It would be. She’d make sure of it

 

2\. Jace

 

"Jace... what the hell is that?"

The man put his hand protectively on Max's ears, a scandalized look on his face.

"Alec, language!"

His impersonation of their mother was too ridiculous not to laugh at, but Alec sobered up quickly, still embarrassed.

"Not but seriously... what is that?"

Jace had volunteered to take Max to play in the sandbox at the park for a while so that his parents could have some time to themselves. He had made some lewd suggestions of course, but Alec and Magnus had mostly made out lazily on the couch, too tired to do anything more physical.

"What, you mean the sign?" asked Jace innocently. Alec pinched the bridge of his nose. 

He was torn between laughing, crying and punching Jace in the face, the holy trinity of his parabatai-induced emotions. As usual, he elected to do none of it and just let out a long-suffering sigh.

"Yeah, Jace, the sign."

The sign in question was propped up next to Jace and Max and read "He's just my nephew, I'm watching him so that his daddies can have some private time" in big, black and ungraceful letters. There was even winking smileys at the end. 

"I'm just tired of old people and single mothers coming to tell me "how cute my son is". For the record, when I do have a son, he will be ten times cuter than yours."

Alec wanted to get angry, but he was incredibly touched. Jace must have received no small amount of dirty looks for that display - not that he minded that much, but still. He could have been asked to leave.

"A woman with two children asked me to leave, but I asked her why. And she told me it was offensive, and I asked her why and I kept asking and asking why but she wouldn't tell what was bothering her and in the end she left us alone," that idiot said with a bright smile.

"Okay, well I'm here now, time to go, and to get rid of that."

"What? That masterpiece of modern art? No way, I'm keeping it. I'll need it again next time anyway"

Alec knew he should have protested, because it was immature and ridiculous, but he took Max in his arms and said nothing at all.

He was still smiling when they got home.

 

3\. Maryse

 

His mother was already waiting for them in front of the restaurant when they got there. Once, a long time ago, she would have shown clearly her annoyance, but she seemed much more relaxed and understanding lately. Magnus argued that she was surely seeing someone. Alec didn't want to think about it.

"Give him to me," she said, with open arms, as soon as they reached her.

"Hello to you too mom,” Alec said with an amused smile. Sometimes his parents’ baby hoarder tendencies were annoying, but he couldn't bring himself to be really bothered by it. 

He would take over caring parents over indifferent ones any day.

She kissed him once on the cheek, once she had Max secured in her arms and showered in affection. She even greeted Magnus that way now. A testimony to how much things had improved over time. 

"Shall we?"

They entered the restaurant. It was their usual lunch date place: they weren't new to it by any means, but the waitress who greeted them was. 

"Good afternoon. Do you have a reservation?"

"Yes, Lightwood, one o'clock. Table for three, plus our little one."

The girl didn’t smile. Her eyes traveled from Maryse, to Alec, to Magnus, to their linked hands, and then to Max. She smiled the fakest professional smile ever.

"Right. Please follow me."

Maryse frowned but said nothing as they went after her to their table. They thought nothing of it. Rude waiters were not uncommon by any means. 

But that rude, it had to be some kind of record.

By the time their plates arrived, Maryse was ready to make a scandal.

"Seriously, what's her problem? Could she treat us any worse? How can she still have a job with that attitude?"

Alec was focusing on Max to avoid her gaze, with his usual method of pretending he didn't notice anything, which was obviously not true. Magnus sighed.

"I’m afraid we are blessed with a special treatment," he said with a resigned tone. Alec was tensed next to him, failing at looking unaffected.

"Why? Do you know her, did you do something?"

"No, but she knows us. Well..."

Magnus hesitated. He looked briefly at Alec, not expecting any help from his side of the table.

"People like us," he said lamely, pointing at Alec and him in a quick hand gesture. Maryse looked confused for a few seconds, but when she understood what he meant, she started literally fuming. Alec looked up, alarmed.

"Excuse me!"

Maryse had talked quite loudly. The waitress looked toward her, like every guests of the few tables between them. She made her way to them reluctantly. Maryse had gotten up.

"Yes?"

"Do you have a problem with us?"

The woman seemed taken aback.

"Excuse me?"

"Do you have. A problem. With us."

Gone was the mother and grandmother. The head of the New York Institute now stood in her place.

"I don't understand what…"

"I think you do. You have treated us with a total lack of respect or even basic decency and I demand to know why you think we deserved such a treatment."

Maryse wasn't holding back - the whole restaurant was listening, more or less discreetly, to the commotion. Alec was dying of shame in his seat. Magnus looked kind of impressed. 

“There’s nothing…”

“I do believe you have issues with my family, and I won’t stand for it,” declared Maryse. The poor woman was shrinking under her accusing glare. A man in a dark suit was quickly making his way towards them. He stopped on Maryse’s side.

“Excuse me Ma'am, is there a problem?”

“You can ask your employee,” answered Maryse sternly. The manager turned his attention to the waitress who was looking frantically around her, looking for support, but people were pretending to ignore them and no one crossed her gaze. 

“We have been coming here regularly because the staff was respectful and not judgmental toward my family. Am I to understand that this has changed?”

The manager looked a bit panicked and confused, until he took in Alec and Magnus still sitting at the table, Max babbling on Alec’s lap. His expression turned stormy when he looked back to his employee.

“I can guarantee you this has not changed at all ma'am,” he said without looking away from the incriminated waitress. “Please accept our sincerest apology and let us treat you for your lunch to at least soften this indiscretion. Someone else will be serving you.”

“Thank you,” Maryse said while sitting back in her chair. The manager gestured sharply for the waitress to follow him, and life resumed in the restaurant. Alec was so red it had to be unhealthy.

“You didn’t have to do that mom,” he mumbled without looking at her. She put a hand on his arm and the other under his chin to turn his face gently toward hers. 

“Yes, I did,” she spoke softly. Then she took her hands back and started eating again.

The service was excellent and they were offered their lunch. They decided they would come back. 

 

4\. Robert

 

“Hum, Izzy?” Alec asked when he found his sister in the training room.

“Yeah?” she answered, without losing focus of the target she was hitting repeatedly with daggers.

“Did… something happen?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… to Dad?”

She turned to him at that and he was surprised to see her smile a devilish smile. It wasn’t usually the expression their father could bring to her face.

“Why do you ask?” she said in a way that said she clearly knew why. 

“Don’t play dumb. He looked so angry earlier that I took a different corridor just not to cross paths with him, and he has a huge band-aid right in the middle of his forehead. It looks ridiculous, and he still managed to look scary somehow.”

She smiled even more at that. He rolled his eyes.

“Come on, tell me. You were with him at the Clave meeting this morning right? Did something happen? Is it why he came back here from Idris with you?”

“Yeah. He said he’d spend a few days at the Institute, because he was too angry to stay. They were glad to see him go away too, I think. Just time for things to settle back a bit.”

“But what happened?”

She was enjoying this way too much. 

“I wish you had been there. It was glorious, really.”

“Just tell me please”

“Well, he head-butted a Council member in the face.”

Alec stared at her dumbly, mouth slightly open.

“What?”

“Right in the nose. I don’t know if he broke it, but there sure was a lot of blood. Broke the skin of his forehead too.”

“What? But why? What the hell?”

Her expression turned serious at that, her mouth set in a hard line as she looked at him in the eye and answered:

“The discussion drifted to Magnus and you.”

It often did. In all probability, it would never cease to be a topic of discussion, of discord, or not before a very long time.

“Not during the proper meeting, but right after. Hightower had not so very nice things to say on the matter, and I guess it was the last straw. He was standing just in front of Robert talking shit, and I had half a mind of going there to slap him, but dad was faster. I swear, one second he was listening, perfectly calm and composed, the next he was crushing that idiot’s face. Stayed stoic through the whole thing too. It was actually pretty cool.”

She was smiling a softer smile now. He was still frozen in shock.

“Alec.”

They both turned at the same time toward the entrance of the room. There stood their father, straight and tall, but with hesitation on his face, his gaze apologetic below that huge piece of gauze taped on his forehead. Alec wondered distantly why he hadn’t drawn an iratze to get rid of the mark. 

The two siblings stayed motionless while their father crossed the space in long strides to stand in front of them. He put two hands high on Alec’s shoulders, thumbs resting on each side of his neck. Alec was always surprised and a bit frustrated at how his father still managed to inspire fear-tinted respect from him, even after all that had happened between them, even with a band aid on his forehead. 

“Is that how I sounded to you, back then?” he asked. They had always used very few words, Alec and his father, which usually left the people around him confused at their interaction. Isabelle raised an eyebrow, but Alec simply nodded.

“I’ll never apologize enough for that,” was all Robert said, before turning away and leaving the training room just as quickly as he had come, leaving his children perplexed behind him. 

“That was… so strange,” whispered Isabelle to her brother, but he couldn’t quite hide the awed expression on his face as he stared at the path his father had taken, still not sure it had actually happened. He pulled her into a hug with a small, delighted laugh.

“Sure was.”

 

5\. A random stranger

 

Alec was already regretting going out with Magnus and Max to the mall. He avoided it as much as he could, because he didn’t want to subject his family to this. At least when they were alone they looked like single fathers. But there was no mistake to make when they were together, also because Magnus could not be persuaded to limit his demonstrations of affection. Alec would never ask him to. First because he likes holding his hand and getting kissed on the cheek when he remembered which sweets to buy for both their son and his four hundred year old father. Second, because he was not ashamed, and he didn’t want to hide, never. He could just imagine the face Magnus would make if he suggested they acted like they weren’t a couple. No, no way.

Still, he was missing the comfort of their home, because there was no one to look at them there, to cast them angry glares of quiet disapproval, like the woman on the other side of the rack of children clothes they were checking. She was rummaging through the clothes but she wasn’t even trying to be discreet as she followed their every move. Alec couldn’t ignore it. He just wanted to leave.

“Mom, what the hell!” came a voice from down the aisle. An angry looking young woman was coming to the angry looking old one. 

“Can’t you leave people alone? Seriously, this is so embarrassing.”

Alec was trying not to stare, but he had to when the young woman turned toward them.

“I’m sorry for my mother, she’s just a rude old witch.”

“Don’t talk like that, you ungrateful brat!”

“That’s all you deserve for being such a bigoted hag!”

“This is a sin!”

“We’re not in the 19th century anymore!”

They probably would have keep on arguing, but they seemed to remember suddenly that they were in a very public place. 

“I’m really sorry,” the woman said again with a smile. “I have hope to get through to her yet.”

“It’s alright. Thank you for your words,” answered Magnus, knowing Alec wasn’t able to.

“Have a good day!” she concluded, before dragging her still arguing mother away. The other clients around had watched the scene with different level of discretion, but they promptly resumed their doings once it was over. 

“Darling, let’s go?” asked Magnus, nudging him gently on the arm. 

“Oh, yeah, sorry, huh… yeah.”

Magnus smiled, but thankfully, didn’t comment on him. Max laughed, and Alec couldn’t help but feel it was at his expense.

 

+1. Alec

 

They were back to the park, the three of them this time. Alec had almost declined, but Magnus had made that face, while waiting for his companion to tell him he wasn’t coming with them, and couldn’t bear it. He didn’t want to. He wanted to spend the afternoon at the park with their son, and he was going to.

Magnus had gone to buy some ice-creams at the kiosk, leaving Alec and Max alone under their usual tree. That is, until a young woman with two toddlers in tow passed by them. Her children stopped, curious at Max – they looked about the same age.

“He’s beautiful,” she said to Alec, as the kids sized each other up. “Is his mother around here?”

That was usually the introduction of single mothers, and he usually answered something very vague and hopefully dissuasive, hoping his gruffness would scare them away. 

“Actually his other dad is buying us something to eat. Should be back anytime now,” he said instead before he could stop himself.

Now that was the moment where people shuffled back awkwardly, with a polite smile, or not, and left without adding anything. He winced internally. Why did he have to say that?

The woman laughed. She laughed, and Alec stared.

“Oh my, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed. My sister would be ashamed of me, I went to her wedding to her long-time girlfriend just last month.”

“It’s… it’s fine.”

“My husband is by the kiosk too. Care if I wait here with you? The kids seem to get along well.”

They did. They were conducting a strange, wordless conversation made of noises and wild gestures, sat on the grass as if it was a council meeting.

“Sure, please.”

“My name is Anna. Those are Lilly and David, they're almost two.”

“Alec. And my son’s second birthday is in a few weeks. His name is Max.”

They watched their children communicate in their own way, play around and laugh. The woman wasn’t much older than Alec himself, and she seemed carefree, happy. She was beautiful too, he thought.

“Did they make a new friend?” came a voice behind them. Both parents turned to see Magnus approaching with the man who had just talked and was probably Anna’s husband. 

“I did too,” she said with a bright laugh while he settled next to her. “Right?”

Alec nodded, still a little thrown off by all this. At his side, Magnus laughed.

“Don’t take it personally, Alec’s not used to talking to people,” he said with a teasing tone. Alec glared at him.

“I hope I wasn’t too forward,” she said, apologetic, and Alec felt the urge to correct her.

“No, no, not at all. It was nice.”

“Those three certainly agree,” added Magnus, pointing at the three kids chasing each other around them. “Stay with us for a while. We don’t often encounter amicable company around here.”

The couple nodded as if they understood, and maybe they did. It was so strange, alien, to talk mundane things with mundane people, to exchange parent stories, shared experiences. Magnus invented them careers as an architect and a cop, and they talked about their family and friends. Max was having a blast. He didn’t have that many occasions to be around children his age. Magnus was keeping an eye on him, in case his magic reacted to his excitement, but nothing happened. They parted at the end of the afternoon with the promise of seeing each other again in the park or, dare they hope, a more adult situation. It was unlikely, but it was nice all the same.

Alec took Magnus’s hand on their way home, and decided not caring about the world was just another thing he would have to get used to.

**Author's Note:**

> I angered myself writing this. People are dicks.
> 
> Is there really people who clicks "Post without Preview"? That's hardcore.
> 
> Also, this serie as yet to feature Raphael Lightwood-Bane. I don't know enough about him yet and writing children is hard, so he's not here for now, but I hope he wille be soon. I'm Inrainbowz on tumblr, thank you for reading!


End file.
